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Self-Improvement. Nonfiction. Right now, over 100 million Americans secretly feel frustrated and bored with their lives. If you've come to regard yourself as your own worst enemy; if you constantly daydream and wonder, "Is this all there is?"; if you have a tendency, when asked how you're doing, to just say "Fine," you may be one of them. If this sounds familiar, there's clearly something missing from your life. This book will help you discover what it is, and how to win it back. Written by Mel Robbins, one of America's top relationship experts, this hands-on guide not only shows you how to put your finger on the problem, it reveals what to do about it. Mel Robbins has spent her career teaching people how to push past their self-imposed limits to get what they truly desire. She has an in-depth understanding of the psychological and social factors that repeatedly hold you back, and more importantly, a unique set of tools for getting you where you want to be. In Stop Saying You're Fine, she draws on the latest neuroscientific research, interviews with countless everyday people, and ideas she's tested in her own life to show what works and what doesn't. The key, she explains, is understanding how your own brain works against you. Because evolution has biased your mental gears against taking action, what you need are techniques to outsmart yourself. That may sound impossible, but Mel has created a remarkably effective method to help you do just that-and some of her discoveries will astonish you. By ignoring how you feel and seizing small amounts of rich possibility-a process she calls "leaning in"-you can make tiny course corrections add up to huge change. Among this book's other topics: how everything can depend on not hitting the snooze button; the science of connecting with other people; what children can teach us about getting things done; and why five seconds is the maximum time you should wait before acting on a great idea. Blending warmth, humor, and unflinching honesty with up-to-the-minute science and hard-earned widom, Stop Saying You're Fine moves beyond the platitudes and easy fixes offered in many self-help books. Mel's insights will actually help vault you to a better life, ensuring that the next time someone asks how you're doing, you can truthfully answer, "Absolutely great.".… (more)
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Unfortunately, after grabbing you by promising to help you find fufillment, the body of the book becomes repetitive and trite. The author exhorts us to "just do it!" and "lean in!" over and over again.
While encouraging us not to let our brain sabotage us, she seems also to be encouraging us to be irresponsible both to ourselves and to those to whom we've made committments. She fairly berates those who refuse to be irresponsible because they don't have faith that "everything will work out fine." Got kids to feed and a mortgage to pay, but dying a little day by day in your high-paying job? Long to sell cupcakes off a cart? Quit your job and buy a pushcart! Don't let the monthly bills, the fact that you don't know how to bake, or your kids' hungry faces bother you. Don't stand in your own way! Everything will work out! What's the worst that can happen?! Geesh.
This book would have been vastly improved by continuing to encourage people to go for their dreams, but in a realistic way. Remind them life involves choices. What do you want: that big house, which requires a high paying job of some kind, or a pushcart for cupcakes? Do you have a way of having both? If not, which do you want more? How can you make the transition without hurting those to whom you have previous committments (like those hungry kids)?
It's not the concept I object to in Robbins' book, it's her constant insistance that we throw caution to the wind and "just do it." Her insistance that you can't achieve your dreams without risking everything is too black and white to be practical. The idea that it's okay to run out on committments to your community, your employer, and your family in search of your own self gratification is not a life philosophy I can admire.
I imagine the author would characterize this review as a textbook example of the kind of person that wallows in an unfulfilled, half-lived life. Perhaps by her standards, she's right. But at least I can go to bed every night with the satisfaction that I stood by my committments, and that makes my unfulfilled life a little more worth living.